I have been flooded with blog comment spam, perhaps the most pernicious problem affecting blogs hosted by Blogspot. The spammers use software that searches for keywords and generates some text that directs people to a website. I had a post Read more
The Playstation mod chip case has come against the games industry. A court in Australia has ruled that mod chips are not an infringement of anti-circumvention legislation as present in the European Information Society Directive, the WCT and the DMCA. Read more
Thursday is privacy day, and we have been presented with two contrasting presentations. First Carlos Gregorio from Argentina gave a very interesting presentation about privacy concerns in Latin America, making specific comments about the theoretical distinctions between certain terms, such Read more
It is early morning here in Santo Domingo and the IP programme has just begun with a talk by Victor Vasquez from WIPO, with an interesting presentation of the work in WIPO regarding copyright in the digital domain. Amongst the Read more
Here I am in Dominican Republic enjoying a good conference (really). Yesterday we had a very interesting workshop dealing with policy issues, and today we are attending an interesting set of talks about internet governance. More details about the conference Read more
(via Techdirt). If you download music, you are more likely to shoplift and cheat on your exams, says a new poll by Canadian firm Pollara, which was unsurprisingly paid by the Canadian music industry. There is a reason why slippery Read more
There is a new format war brewing in consumer electronics that reminds people of the VHS vs Betamax battle. This brings two competing incompatible DVD formats against one another – Sony’s Blu-Ray vs Toshiba’s HD DVD. You may wonder why Read more
This is another amazing comment by James Boyle in FT regarding the WIPO Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations, also known as the Webcasting Treaty. Boyle’s point is undeniably strong as usual. Why does the broadcast industry need a Read more
(via Steve Hedley’s news list). An interest in software patents and IP can make you famous. Florian Muller is the founder of Nosoftwarepatents.com, who successfully lobbied against the Software Patent Directive. Muller has been nominated in this year’s Europeans of Read more